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Writers who can’t invent stories often substitute style for narrative. They remind me of the painter who couldn’t paint people, so he painted chairs.

Bernard Malamud

How one works, assuming he’s disciplined, doesn’t matter.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Assuming Discipline Matter Works
Writing is a mode of being. If I write I live.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Boring Live Mode Writing
Of course it would cost something, but he was an expert in cutting corners; and when there were no more corners left he would make circles rounder.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Circles Cutting Experts
You can’t eat language but it eases thirst.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Ease Language Thirst
Somewhere I put it this way: first drafts are for learning what one’s fiction wants him to say. Revision works with that knowledge to enlarge and enhance an idea, to reform it. Revision is one of the exquisite pleasures of writing.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Ideas Reform Revision Work Writing
The first draft of a book is the most uncertain-where you need guts, the ability to accept the imperfect until it is better.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Accept Book Imperfect Uncertain Until
No use fanning up hot coals when you have to walk across them.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Across Anger Coal Hot
The wild begins where you least expect it, one step off your normal course
BERNARD MALAMUD

Course Normal Steps
Life is a tragedy full of joy.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Follow Joy Life Your Heart
The whole history of baseball has the quality of mythology.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Baseball Mythology Quality
(Clothes) cannot change a man’s nature. He’s either kind or he isn’t, with or without clothes.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Clothes Kind Men
A writer has to surprise himself to be worth reading.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Reading Surprise Worth
I fix what’s broken – except in the heart.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Broken Expect Heart
A man had to learn, it was his nature.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Learning Men Nature
We didn’t starve but nobody ate chicken unless we were sick or the chicken was.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Poor Poverty Sick
We can’t all be friends and relatives as the world is; most of us have to be strangers.
BERNARD MALAMUD

Human Relations Stranger World

Writers who can’t invent stories often substitute style for narrative. They remind me of the painter who couldn’t paint people, so he painted chairs.

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Writers who can’t invent stories often substitute style for narrative. They remind me of the painter who couldn’t paint people, so he painted chairs.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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